


Cat Guts Like A Knife

by OldEmeraldEye



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: Backstory, Blanket Permission, Cats, Eve (XWP) Has Two Moms, Gen, Nanny Ogg's Garden Gnomes, Offscreen Nanny Ogg, Scars, The Gaulish Incident, and they are both horrifically embarassing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-26 08:01:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21370813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldEmeraldEye/pseuds/OldEmeraldEye
Summary: Eve lies, when she attributes her scar to a gaulish spear.
Relationships: Eve | Livia/Varia
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Into the Catverse, Secondary Character Focus





	Cat Guts Like A Knife

When she is Eve, and she is with her mothers and they are among the amazons, and she is definitely not trying to impress a pretty girl no matter what anyone (her mothers) might think, she will say she got this scar from a Gaulish spear.

Eve lies. Or rather, the story that she gives Varia is only partially true. She had been in Gaul when it was acquired, and there had been spears, and she had nearly died, but she will not, even under threat of torture, death, or even a very intent pair of brown eyes that are currently making close inspection of her, admit to the true and full course of events. She is reformed into the child she ought to have been, and no longer claims Rome, but she will not relinquish her pride.

She lied to Varia when she said she got the scar off a Gaul. The village that she doesn’t - couldn't - name was real, and her legion’s attack on it under cover of darkness was as successful an operation as she presents it, both on return in triumph to Octavian in Rome and in confidence (boast, she is boasting like a highborn boy after his first kill) in the remnants of a battlefield on a land that she ought once to have called home, had events been other than they were.

But the hut out by the woods she came across while her men made merry is relegated to the shadows of memory. The small, strange statues that littered the cleared patch of ground around it are nothing but figments of her imagination from the instant she sets an eye on them. Partly an involuntary defense mechanism, partly a curiosity so horribly fascinated that any further thoughts in its direction dropped over the edge of some grand mental cliff.

The singing from the partly open window – she hadn’t recognised the language the song was in but, being off key and more than slightly drunk, she hadn't seen the singer being an issue – hadn’t concerned her as much as smell of stew she was following. Her rations were better than the rest of her troops, as befitting her station, but were still rations at the end of the day. Her usual methods for supplementing meals was incompatible with rampant destruction of village, and the wood were far too dark to go hunting. An isolated hovel was just the stroke of luck she could attribute to the gods favour.

A bellyful of stew was all that she had in mind. She was in such a good mood that she'd even leave the cook alive - provided it was edible, she had standards. The fence hadn’t even been that high, barely above her knees. She had stepped over it.

Then a howling, snarling blur as one of the shadows came alive, and panicking yelping that she refuses to admit might have been her, and pain.

She tends to the wounds herself, and only one of the slashes she escapes with scars.


End file.
